by Dan Savage
In addition to being the most overworked people on the planet, Americans are also the most productive—clear evidence that, how-everoverworked and stressed-out we are, very few Americans are slacking off at work. Indeed, 32 percent of American workers eat lunch and work simultaneously; 32 percent of us never leave the building once we arrive at work; and 18 percent say that they can’t use the vacation days they’ve got coming because they’re simply too busy. Which may be why the ILO ranked the American Worker first in productivity. Productivity per American worker in constant 1990 dollars was $54,870 in 2000, $1,500 more per year than Belgium, the number-two nation. According to the ILO, productivity per worker in the United States was $10,000 higher than in Canada last year and $14,000 higher than in Japan. So while we may be stressed-out and exhausted and chained to our desks and cheated out of the few vacation days we’ve got coming, hey, at least we’re number one.
How do we do it? How do Americans take shorter vacations or none at all, work longer hours, work harder, and produce more, all with no time for restorative, restful sloth? How do Americans (excluding President George W. Bush5) manage to survive without monthlong vacations?
Well, like that poor, stressed-out kid in the Partnership for a Drug-Free America ad, a lot of us smoke pot.
I want the American people in general, and my mother in particular, to hear this. I’m only going to type it once: I am not a pothead.
But I do smoke pot. Sometimes. Occasionally. Cautiously.
Many of us who don’t fit the pot-smoking stereotype are reluctant to be open about our pot use; we don’t want people to think we’re irresponsible potheads. But so long as only white college kids with hemp T-shirts are willing to admit to smoking pot, well, then the public image of pot smokers will never improve. Like swingers who won’t come out to their families, friends, and neighbors, the silence of pot smokers like me perpetuates the stereotypes about pot smokers and keeps the War on Drugs roaring. So I’m going to risk telling the truth: I am a pot smoker—and I don’t fit the stereotype. I don’t wear hemp; I don’t have dreads; I don’t think deodorant is a bourgeois plot; I don’t smoke pot on a daily basis; I don’t have glaucoma; and I didn’t vote for Ralph Nader. And unlike most people who’ve “experimented” with pot, I didn’t start in my teens. I didn’t smoke pot for the first time until I was in my thirties. And, finally, I don’t even smoke that much pot.
This is how I’d describe my pot use: Every once in a very, very great while, when my son is spending the night with his grandparents or sleeping over at a friend’s house, my boyfriend and I rent some videos, lay in some chips, and obtain one—just one—measly little joint from someone who is forever in our debt, at least where pot is concerned. (More on that in a moment.) We put in a video, crawl into bed with our joint and our bags of chips, and we get really, really baked, and attempt to watch a movie. We do this once or twice a year. Did I say I don’t smoke pot daily? It would be more accurate to say that I sometimes don’t get around to smoking pot semiannually. In between our very rare pot nights, my boyfriend and I don’t smoke pot, buy pot, grow pot, and we don’t keep pot in our home.
Well, that’s not entirely accurate. We were recently keeping a huge amount of pot in our home. You see, Officer, when our washing machine broke down, my boyfriend took our dirty clothes to a Laundromat. When he pulled our clothes out of the washing machine, everything was covered with what looked like oregano. But it wasn’t oregano—it never is oregano, is it? Apparently, the hippie who used the washing machine before my boyfriend had left a huge bag of pot in his clothes. His huge bag of pot must have fallen out of whatever pocket it was in, and the hippie left his huge bag of pot in the washing machine. My boyfriend came along and put our clothes in the washing machine with the hippie’s huge bag of pot. When our clothes were being washed, the huge bag of pot opened up and pot got all over our clothes. After my boyfriend pulled our clothes out of the washing machine and discovered they were covered with what looked like oregano, he launched an investigation into the oregano’s source. That’s when he found the huge bag of pot in the washing machine.
A woman was waiting to use the washing machine after my boyfriend, which presented him with a quandary: If he left the huge bag of pot in the washing machine, the woman would find it and think it was his huge bag of pot. He didn’t want this woman—or anyone—to think he was the kind of person who owned a huge bag of pot, so my boyfriend put the huge bag of pot in our laundry basket and brought it home. Which meant, of course, that to prevent some woman from thinking he was the kind of person who owned a huge bag of pot, we were now, problematically enough, the proud owners of a huge bag of pot.
When we weighed our huge bag of pot we discovered to our horror that it was heavier than a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Twice as heavy. (It was still damp when we weighed it, but it was still a huge bag of pot.) We figured that it would take us about twenty-five years to life to smoke all the pot in the bag my boyfriend brought home. In the meantime, of course, drug-sniffing dogs three counties over would be howling in the direction of our house, and if the police ever found this huge bag of pot in our house, well, we’d look like a couple of drug lords. Since we would never be able to smoke all of this pot, and since we couldn’t risk keeping it in the house, we decided to give the huge bag of pot away—that’s right, Officer, we gave it away. We didn’t sell it. Selling a huge bag of pot would be wrong. It might even be illegal. So we found a loving home for our huge bag of pot, one where it wouldn’t last twenty days. And when I handed the huge bag of damp pot over to a friend who smokes more dope than a DEA incinerator, he shook my hand and told me he would be forever in my debt. And once or twice a year, when my son is at his grandparents’ or sleeping over at a friend’s house, I call the incinerator and remind him that, as time has not ended, he is still in my debt.
According to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 20 million Americans use marijuana at least once a year, 6 million use it at least once a week, and 3 million Americans smoke marijuana daily. The Household Survey put current national consumption of marijuana at 7 to 10 million joints per day, or 1,200 to 1,800 metric tons per year. These figures may be low, since most researchers believe the Household Survey underestimated actual drug use. (“Hello, I’m from the government. How much dope are you guys smoking lately?”) Other attempts to measure American consumption of marijuana put the figure anywhere from 2,700 metric tons to 4,700 metric tons. To put these figures in some sort of perspective, a metric ton is 2,204.6 pounds; 4,700 metric tons is 10,361,620 pounds of pot, or roughly 46,000 Oprahs. The street value of a pound of pot is about $5,000, so 10,361,620 pounds of pot represents an annual gross sales of $51 billion.
Americans smoke more pot than the citizens of any other industrialized nation: 7.2 percent of U.S. population regularly smokes pot, compared with 5.4 percent in Europe and 2.1 percent in Asia. Marijuana is the fourth largest cash crop in the United States, behind corn, soybeans, and hay. It’s the biggest cash crop in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Which may explain why drug warriors haven’t proposed spraying toxic defoliants or funding right-wing death squads in an effort to “cut off” the supply of pot to American consumers. (Defoliants and death squads are integral aspects of Plan Colombia, our federal government’s effort to halt the cultivation of coca in that miserable South American country. Somehow what’s good for Colombia isn’t good for Oregon or Alabama. Perhaps Colombia would come in for gentler treatment if it had a congressional delegation and a handful of votes in the electoral college.) Despite a decades-long drug war, billions spent to fight marijuana cultivation, and thousands of Americans tossed in prison for marijuana possession, “marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in America today and is readily available throughout all metropolitan, suburban, and rural areas of the continental United States,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
If the sale of pot were legalized
in the United States today—and strictly regulated, like other widely available and infinitely more destructive mood-altering substances (cigarettes, alcohol, cable)—the federal government might be able to fund a new round of tax breaks for the wealthy. (Think about it, George.) Here’s another attractive aspect to marijuana legalization for right wingers: Legalization would take the immensely profitable marijuana business out of the hands of urban African Americans, Hispanics, and poor whites—the folks who deal and distribute marijuana—and put it in the hands of huge multinational corporations controlled by white men in suits.
According to a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration study, 33 percent of all Americans have used pot; other estimates range as high as 60 percent—which means more Americans have used pot than voted for George W. Bush. Again, “official” counts of American pot smokers are believed to be low; I personally don’t recall anyone from the government asking me if I smoke dope. (And wouldn’t most Americans, if asked about smoking pot, lie to the government since the government is in the habit of arresting pot smokers?6) And yet despite all the dope we’re smoking, Americans are the most productive, hardest-working people on the planet. We may be higher than the workers in every other industrialized nation, but we work longer hours, we take fewer vacations, and we produce more than the better-rested, better-paid, and less-stoned workers in other industrialized nations.
Bear that in mind.
One common argument against drug legalization—a highly controversial move that would make it more difficult for many Americans to buy recreational drugs—is that drug use negatively impacts the productivity of American workers. Drug warriors claim that productivity loss attributable to pot smoking alone costs American businesses $100 billion a year. That’s one hundred billion, with a b—and what a nice round number it is. One hundred billion. $100,000,000,000. So many zeros, all in a neat little row. The number is so round and so large, in fact, that it immediately makes any thinking person suspicious and every pot smoker paranoid.
As an admitted semiannual pot smoker, I have an obvious pro-pot bias. (This admission has dashed my childhood dream of obtaining a haz-mat trucking license.) Nevertheless, it seems impossible to me that all three of the following things can be true: (1) American workers smoke more pot than the workers in any other industrialized nation. (2) Pot use has an enormous negative impact on the productivity of the American worker, to the tune of $100 billion every year. (3) American workers are the most productive workers on the goddamned planet. How can we be the most productive workers and the highest workers if pot smoking is so harmful to our productivity? And even if all the pot smokers in the United States stopped smoking dope tomorrow (think of all the family farmers in Oregon that would put out of business), how much more productive can the American worker possibly be? Barring an act of God, there is a limit to the number of hours in the day, the number of days in the week, the number of weeks in the year.
Since we know that the first two premises are facts—we smoke more, we’re more productive—I think it’s clear that federal drug warriors pulled that $100 billion figure out of their asses. So what impact does pot have on job performance? Very little, I should think, since the vast majority of pot smokers, like the vast majority of beer drinkers, are only interested in indulging themselves after work. They’re called recreational drugs for a reason—to wit, most people who use them do so when they’re recreating, not working. Drug warriors don’t want to talk about pot smokers who want to indulge at home, since most Americans believe that what people do when they’re not at work isn’t anyone’s business. Whenever legalizing marijuana is discussed, drug warriors raise the specter of people smoking pot at work, calling to mind terrifying images of stoned surgeons and airline pilots. It’s a bullshit, let’s-change-the-subject nonargument: very few pot smokers believe people should get high at work—or drunk at work, for that matter. That some people get drunk and go to work is not held up as a reason to prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol. (And arguing against legalizing pot because some people get high at work presupposes that pot’s illegality is somehow keeping it out of the hands of people who get high at work. Pot is currently illegal and widely available; anyone who wants to get high and go to work is doing so already. Just take a look at your local barista, CD-store employee, and pizza delivery driver.)
Having come out boldly against stoned people performing surgery and flying airplanes, I feel obligated to note that while the federal government hasn’t funded many studies looking into the effects of marijuana on job performance, what little research has been done was inconclusive. Researchers who attempted to measure pot’s impact on job performance have found that people have a hard time performing sequential addition/subtraction problems while high. Addition and subtraction is not a task many of us perform at work, but clearly CPAs should not smoke dope on the job. Researchers have also found that some people have difficulty judging distances and difficulty with visual tracking while high. Finally, researchers have found that pot smokers are able to “suppress the marijuana high” when they need to, which may be why studies that dealt directly with actual job performance while high have shown no—repeat, no—difference between people who are high and people who are not high.
If I were a pot fanatic, I would point to this last bit of data and insist that people should be able to get high at work; a pot fanatic might argue that a high surgeon doing a quadruple bypass should be able to “suppress the marijuana high” long enough to close up your chest. My personal experiences with marijuana, however, prevent me from making that argument. In research conducted on myself, I’ve documented that I’m not a very productive person when I’m high. This might have something to do with how late in life I began “experimenting” with marijuana, or how infrequently I use the drug. While the vast majority of my fellow pot-smoking Americans began experimenting with dope when they were teenagers, I didn’t smoke dope for the first time until I was thirty-two years old. My late start coupled with the infrequency of my indulgence has kept my tolerance for pot low; one or two puffs, and I’m pretty much useless. I’m one of those pot smokers who gets lost on the way to the bathroom, so I’m no more comfortable with the idea of high pilots or surgeons than the average drug czar.
When discussing pot and productivity, at some point it has to be acknowledged that pot smokers make easily verifiable contributions to our legitimate economy. First, most of us are employed, we pay taxes, and we stay out of trouble. Pot smokers also support the small farms in places like Alabama, West Virginia, and Kentucky that grow and sell pot. Finally, let’s not forget the snack food industry. According to PepsiCo’s 2000 Annual Report, the company sold $1,782,000,000 worth of Doritos in the United States and Canada that year. You don’t have to be high to eat a bag Doritos, I realize, but it helps. State and local governments take in tens of millions of dollars every year in Doritos-related sales tax, while the more than 45,000 people employed by PepsiCo to make and distribute Doritos pay income taxes to the federal government. It seems to me an appalling act of ingratitude for the federal government to use money collected from PepsiCo’s employees to jail some of PepsiCo’s best customers.
I’d like to take a moment here to reassure my mother. I don’t hang out with a lot of dope smokers, Mom, nor do I see myself as a member of a dope-smoking underground, subculture, or community. I don’t even like Doritos that much. I’m just a regular, working parent who smokes dope from time to time. I suppose I could have played it safe and found some other pot smoker to profile in this chapter, but I felt that it would be dishonest to write about pot smoking without coming clean about my own pot use. Furthermore, profiling myself was the slothful thing to do—I didn’t have to leave the house to find a pot smoker, and I was always available for interviews.
Though I don’t count myself a wild-eyed marijuana booster, I am, however, grateful to High Times readers and hemp wearers for ensuring the continued supply of dope in this country, and its constantly improv
ing quality. Even so, you’re never going to see me in a marijuana leaf T-shirt, Mom, I swear to God.
Now I’d like to go one step further and argue that pot not only doesn’t have a negative impact on the productivity of the American worker, but that pot also makes it possible for the American worker—the pot-smoking ones, at least—to be as productive as we are.
While the workweek shrinks and vacation time grows for European workers, the amount of time Americans spend at work continues to grow (at least for those of us who have jobs). How do we do it? How do we work like crazy without going crazy? I think pot has a lot to do with it. It’s a just hunch, I’ll admit, and since I’m not a drug czar, I don’t expect the things I say to be taken at face value. Unlike William J. Bennett, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, or our current drug czar, John Walters, I don’t think every fool thing that pops into my head is God’s revealed truth. So I’m eager for social scientists and researchers to look into my theory, and if they can prove that I’m wrong, I will do something very unlike a drug czar (or Bill O’Reilly) and admit that I’m wrong. Until someone provides me with proof, however, I will go on believing that smoking pot isn’t a $100 billion-per-year threat to American productivity—indeed, pot is one of the chief pillars of American productivity.